I haven't hit endgame yet, but I definately like the idea of smaller raids. 40-man groups are pretty daunting to me (and I just don't have the time to do that), so a smaller raid seems pretty nice. I like the other things as well, but the raids seem like the best addition.

I like the pvp idea, since most people hate the pvp grind and end up burning themselves out.

Not only that, but so many people don't do it legit whether they CP farm, get China farmers to do it, or have multiple people play their account (friends). Maybe this will help allieviate it some... but probably not.

the other stuff sounds cool as well.

as for the raid cap.. i don't know. i haven't raided extensively enough to comment. The consensus seems mixed, but since they are raising the debuff limit (to 40) that might help the pidgeon-holing of some classes (shadow priests become slightly more viable, warlocks can probably DoT to their hearts content, etc).

There were very real problems with the 40-man raid model, but to "fix" it by completely deleting the playstyle instead of designing viable alternatives and balanced itemization isn't really going to help hardly anyone.

The people that don't raid because "it's just mashing one button for 6 hours," are going to get raped by the new content unless Blizzard reps are lying about the difficulties. Current raid guilds suddenly have a bunch of new personnel issues to deal with. Some current raid guilds have been in place with almost the same roster since Beta. I've been playing with most of my guild for a year (although we likely won't have to kick anyone with the number of people who are planning on cancelling).

This combined with their new idea for difficulty settings on instances just screams to me, "We're not really going to make any more content, just cut your options down and then make you farm the same dungeon for even longer to get your loot." Given a lot of their current game balance decisions, I am not optimistic about much of the expansion, though I will probably give the 5 man 60-70 dungeons a whirl with the original group of people I leveled with.

*splurt* I really really like the changes. All of them. I am excited and now have a teepee in my pants.

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All right, we are going to use a fan brush here and uh why don't you take some hunter green and we are going to put a happy little bush right down over here in the corner there and that'll just be our little secret and if you tell anyone that that bush is there I will come to your house and I will cut you.

Hm, let's see how I jumped to that conclusion:Topic title: 10 and 25 Man Raids ONLY in the ExpansionOP: Tom Chilton confirms 25 man max player raids for TBC.Eyonix: It's true, the plan is for five-player capped grouped dungeons. Ten-player capped raid dungeons. As well as Twenty-five-player capped epic raid dungeons. Poster: So even Illidan is going to be 25 man only? I can accept ALL other dungeons being 5-15 man, but not Illidan.Eyonix: I can assure you that Black Citadel -- the raid dungeon that players can enter in the Burning Crusade to combat Illidan, will still be the most difficult and epic raid dungeon that World of Warcraft players have ever seen.

Right there: It's true that there will ONLY be 10 and 25-man raids in the expansion, and that Illidan's dungeon will be 25-man but "will still" be of greater difficulty than Naxx.

The way I see it...this gives people with lives the chance to actually do the stuff at the end. My wife and I have no desire to do the end game stuff right now, because we don't want to have to try and get into a guild with at least 38 other competent people. We don't want to spend 4-6 hours of our nights running through a dungeon with these people. 5-10 I am cool with. Even 20 is ok. I just have no desire to do it with 38 other people that are so hardcore that they have a Night Elf tatoo on their ass.

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All right, we are going to use a fan brush here and uh why don't you take some hunter green and we are going to put a happy little bush right down over here in the corner there and that'll just be our little secret and if you tell anyone that that bush is there I will come to your house and I will cut you.

I as well like all the changes. The current PVP honor system is a *#$&*#. I just hope I can maintain my PVPness until the crap is fixed. Decaying honor is so lame. :( Actually, I wish the system was put in 1.12 instead of the minor changes happening. :p

I like the raid change as well, but then I don't like the 40 man style anyway, lol. I still think there'll be 40 man instances later on (as some endgame guild people are going paranoid over), but for now it's nice not to have to pull together 40 people.

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It's never too late to start learning; it's always too early to stop learning.

The hardcoreness of end-game guilds is pretty overstated, I think. I play about 10-16 hours a week in total, I raid 2-3 nights a week (my raid attendance is 95% over the last four weeks). Our attendance cap for looting is 65%, so I could easily cut my playtime down if I cared to. Not counting transfer guilds, we're the first horde guild and third overall. We've also outlived several other guilds who spend a lot more time on content for the same progression. It is not hard to progress in the end-game with very minimal time invested as long as the players are halfway competent (believe me, we have some non-optimal players) and the time is spent well.

We had an ad posted on our realm forum a few days ago:"Do you want to be in a guild that does not tolerate incompetence? Can you handle raiding 7 days a week? If so, apply at http://www.reignguild.com.

Located on Kalecgos <PvP>, Reign has killed 10 bosses in Naxx: Anub, Faerlina, Maex, Noth, Raz, Heigan, Patch, Grob, Gluth, Thad. We need 5 or 6 new people to fill some gaps in our roster due to BLIZZARD PERMA BANNING OUR RAID LEADER AND MAIN TANK HEALER for account sharing. A few people jumped ship at this depressing news, but it's their loss. We still have our entire core member of the guild ready to raid, all we need is 5 or 6 more people dedicated to progression raiding to make this possible. "

And as our lovable mangina warlock posted... "I don't care who you are and what bosses you're on, if your guild has to raid 7 days a week for progression then tolerating incompetence is definitely not in your modus operandi."

I guess I just fail to see how any one person can feel powerful when you have to be one face in 40 to get something done. Blizzard learned from Diablo 2 when making this and made you feel powerful early on and for most of your adventure. Then bam, you get L60 and all the sudden you're worthless alone, you can't get anything resembling good end game gear unless you join 39 more players in a long boring series of encounters where 1 player can get the other 39 wiped easily and initiate a bitchfest of incredible proportions.

It sounds to me like by going down to 25 max they're putting more importance on the individual players (giving them more to do), and less on the zerg factor. That is a good thing in my opinion.

There seems to be a disconnect in your post. You appear to hold the common belief that raiding is a zerg and impersonal, but yet acknowledge the truth that one person's performance can make a sizeable impact on the group. If the encounters are tuned for 40 and capped to 40, then bringing 40 simply isn't and cannot be a zerg. And especially in non-MC encounter design, individuals certainly do have a meaningful role; the bitchfest of incredible proportions, if you're in a guild that does that, only happens when someone is mashing one button instead of individually contributing to the fight. And if you've actually experienced the end-game--which I doubt--and don't find individuality in the fight designs and actually do find it a long, boring series of encounters, then you're just not playing the right game, and I doubt the lowered cap will change that.

Plus, it's just not true that you can't get anything resembling good gear outside of a 40-man raid. For many classes, their Tier 0.5 sets are equivalent to Tier 1, and Zul'Gurub and the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj hold great loot as well. There's stuff in both that rival not only Blackwing Lair gear, but later AQ40 gear. It's easy to get swept up in the WoW Fora trends, but there are a whole lot of inaccuracies that are repeated over and over there.

My personal favorite bit was shortly after the raid cap announcement hit, and EVERY SINGLE CLASS had a serious topic in General about how their class and only their class would be made useless by the raid cap.